Step 1: Check Your Mindset (and Message)

For messaging, look over all your sales conversation materials making sure every piece asks and answers these 3 questions your buyer has:

Why should I change?

Why now?

Why with you?

Step 2: Remove gunk from your sales process

Your sales process & leadgen might need a tune-up:

Leads are stuck waiting for a first contact

40% of scored leads should move to the next sales stage, or out, each week

15-20 companies, max, should be in the waiting-for-first-contact stage

First contact initiated, prospect has gone dark

Increase your number of touches

Poke, prod, and challenge

Vary your call times

Engage at high, low, and lateral levels to start conversations

Lead quality is suspect

Know your waterfall (step 3).

Step 3: Know your waterfall

Know these metrics to consistently make quota:

W scored leads (leads that have engagement), produces

X meaningful conversations that advance the sale forward rather than leak out, yielding

Y discovery/fit conversations, for

Z opportunities

Step 4: Change Your Habits

Habit is the #1 lost component for consistently making quota.

Aim for 3 daily metrics:

50: # of e-mails sent

5: # of meaningful conversations

10: # of daily referral requests from your network

Habit trumps inspiration. And, the best part, is habit is a learned skill.

Bonus Step: Iterate and Improve

Continually look for ways to improve these four steps and watch your quota issues dissolve. The small, consistent changes you make will pay off in big dividends for you.

Marylou Tyler is the bestselling coauthor of Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com. A successful trainer and consultant, she advises Fortune 1,000 companies on how to improve the sales process, specifically the assembly, activation, and optimization of the outreach sales channel.